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Class 3>T-2.S5 
Book.. 15 



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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT: 



Foreign Religious Series 



Edited by 
R. J. COOKE, D. D. 



Second Series. i6mo. cloth. Each 40 cents, net. 



DO WE NEED CHRIST FOR 

COMMUNION WITH GOD ? 

By Professor Ludwig Lemme, of the University 
of Heidelberg 



ST. PAUL AS A THEOLOGIAN 

(two parts) 

By Professor Paul Feine, of the University of Vienna 



THE NEW MESSAGE IN THE TEACHING 

OF JESUS 

By Professor Philipp Bachmann, of the University 

of Erlangen 



THE PECULIARITY OF THE RELIGION 
OF THE BIBLE 

By Professor Conrad Von Orelli, of the University 
of Basle 



OUR LORD 

By Professor K. Muller, of the University of Erlangen 



Do We Need Christ for 
Communion with God? 



By 

LUDWIG LEMME 

Profeisor of Theology in the University of Heidelberg 




NEW YORK: EATON & MAINS 
CINCINNATI: JENNINGS & GRAHAM 






UBKARY of ■ 
Two tfoptos riet 

MAR 8 1908 

GLASS-* AXo, l*u, 

;! 7 QOV\ 7 



Copyright, 1908, by 
EATON & MAINS. 



DO WE NEED CHRIST FOR COM- 
MUNION WITH GOD? 

Complaints and charges are heard re- 
specting estrangement from religion and 
apostasy from the Church. And yet an 
earnest interest is felt in our time concerning 
the truth of religion ; far-reaching questions 
are made concerning life in the Church. 
When materialism was at its high water 
mark many rejoiced at the supposed end of 
religious belief; but, through all jubilations 
and the victorious shouts of exact science, 
of technical progress and a civilization 
reveling in enjoyment, there obtruded with 
irresistible power, not only from the bottom 
of the popular mind but also from the very 
heights of culture, the need of ideals which 
are not merged in arithmetical computation, 
nor found at the bottom of the crucible and 
the retort. 

In the Religious Studies of a Worldly 
Person, Riehl says: "The clearer we per- 
ceive the advances of our time in science 
and in the whole national life, the stronger 
we become and we long for an inner apper- 

5 



6 Do We Need Christ 

ception of our existence, which no inquiry 
and anatomy can give us ; for a first cause of 
our moral endeavor, which is not contained 
in outward works of righteousness; for a 
consolation and hope which even the proud- 
est trump of human subservience of the pow- 
ers of nature cannot offer us." All due honor 
to natural sciences ! But they give no answer 
to the deepest questions of the human mind, 
no satisfaction for the deepest need of the 
human heart. 

The religious question has to do with the 
highest dedication of life — peace and tran- 
quillity, eternal salvation, final possession of 
truth. In the sense that without him no 
one can come to a communion with the 
Father in heaven, Jesus offered himself and 
still offers himself, as the Way, the Truth, 
and the Life. The question as to the re- 
ligion which in like manner satisfies the 
heart and reason, becomes of itself there- 
fore the question as to Christ. 

Never before has so much been written 
concerning the Christ as in our day. Who 
was Jesus ? What did he mean ? What did 
he claim to be? What has he done? How 
did they think of him in his time? Thus 



For Communion With God? 7 

the questions buzz in endless disquisitions 
and discussions, in which is contained the 
decision on the pretended "assured results" 
of negative criticism, that they are not as- 
sured, but entirely unsatisfactory, and in 
which the key-note sounds through: What 
have I to think of Jesus Christ? Buried a 
thousand times, he is a thousand times again 
the Risen and Exalted One. This uncon- 
querable vigor of religious imperishableness 
forces the question : Is it not merely because 
of the historical connection in which every 
one stands by birth and education that innu- 
merable individuals know themselves bound 
to Jesus Christ as their Saviour and Re- 
deemer? But, must it be really so, that I 
can satisfactorily arrange my religious re- 
lation to God only through the mediation of 
Jesus Christ? In other words, is he not 
merely, "religio-historically" considered, the 
founder of the Christian religion, and is he 
any more than one of the founders of re- 
ligion? Is he, in fact, the one absolutely 
necessary and unrefusable mediator between 
God and man ? 

There are at present many, who do not 
mean to be irreligious and unchristian, and 



8 Do We Need Christ 

yet they care little for the Person of Jesus 
Christ. So far as they are directed to him, 
they know not what to do with him ; and so 
far as he comes to them in Christian teach- 
ing with the claim of believing in him, they 
neither show nor feel their need of him. 

It is of importance to understand the dis- 
position and temper of this attitude. It is 
founded in the difference between that which 
is given with human nature and that which 
has historically become such. Much as all of 
us are conditioned and influenced by custom 
and tradition, we can yet separate ourselves 
within certain bounds from that which has 
historically become so. For example, one 
can leave the country to which he belongs 
by birth; he can divest himself of received 
habits and views of life; he can even — but 
indeed not wholly — abandon his mother- 
tongue. But that which one can never give 
up entirely, at least not successfully eradicate 
with the root, is the uniform continuance of 
his human nature with its psychical talents 
and mental forces. In consequence, that 
which with the psychical organization was 
given to human nature as continual and un- 
changeable, has often turned against that 



For Communion With God? 9 

which has only become ours historically. In 
the realm of religion since the days of Eng- 
lish deism, the war-cry is heard : Away with 
positive Christianity! Man has religion by 
nature. It is the same longing for com- 
munion with the eternal, the infinite, which 
speaks in the highest developed religions as 
in the dull fetichism of heathenism. It is 
only needful to put aside that which has his- 
torically become, in order to hear the orig- 
inal, natural sound of the pure language of 
the human heart. 

Rousseau harked back from the corrupt 
culture of rotten conditions to the artless 
simplicity of nature. Thus in religion, one 
only wishes to know something of the 
originally universal communion with God. 
But Lessing and Kant put intellectual truth 
in opposition to historical science, and repre- 
sented the view that historical information 
and tradition can only establish historical 
knowledge, but never convictions of truth. 
The certainty of truth, they affirmed, be- 
longs exclusively to reason. Thus the 
attempt to eliminate everything historical 
from religion, to reduce all religion to 
impulses of feeling, emotions, volitions, 



io Do We Need Christ 

notions, mind-activities, and rational ideas 
which come from the uniform essence of 
human nature, continued through the nine- 
teenth century. Occasionally it was pushed 
back, sometimes apparently overcome, but 
it always fostered rationalism. And this 
rationalistic abrogation of the Christian ele- 
ment in Christianity has at the present again 
obtained a power which, after the displace- 
ment of the old rationalism, one would not 
have believed possible. In the keenest man- 
ner the opposition to everything historical in 
religion, to everything specifically Christian 
— for Christianity in its essence is an his- 
torical religion — has been expressed at the 
present time from a philosophical point of 
view by Eduard von Hartmann. In the 
preface to his book on the Christianity of the 
New Testament (Sachsa, 1905), he says: 
"Whoever is serious in the application of the 
development idea to the religious conscious- 
ness of humanity, knows also that in no his- 
torical phenomenon can he seek more than 
a relative degree of development, and that no 
historical critique through the uncovering of 
this relativeness, can disturb his religious 
consciousness which rests -on an absolute 



For Communion With God? ii 

foundation. Historical foundations of a re- 
ligion are always subject to doubt, and can 
never give the assurance of the conviction 
which the religious consciousness needs, and 
which can only be drawn from one's own 
heart. 1 Whatever rests on the foundation of 
belief in providence and the doctrine of de- 
velopment knows that God has ways and 
means enough to realize even more perfectly 
the religious ideal in humanity. He requires 
no historical surety for this faith in a soli- 
tary, absolute, perfect realization of the ideal 
in the past and cannot be disturbed in the 
quiet self-certainty of his religious conscious- 
ness by any historical criticism, because it 
can never do more than reveal the relative- 
ness of all past degrees of development." 

According to this philosopher, the fate of 
all historical religions, Christianity included, 
is relativeness, and rationalistic theologians 
of the present adopt for the most part the 
same idea. Whether they declare Chris- 



1 The philosopher of the " Unconscious " is by no means 
disturbed in his constructions by such accidental things 
as facts; but facts prove, that reason relying upon itself, 
can never obtain religious certainty, but that on the con- 
trary its fate is skepticism. Assurance of religious con- 
viction originates only in the personal union with the pro- 
phetical personality in which the bearer of the absolute 
revelation of God is seen. 



12 Do We Need Christ 

tianity is being evolved in the stream of the 
history of religion, in order to profess an ab- 
stract religious idea, or, whether they bring 
Christianity to this abstract religious idea, 
amounts to the same thing. As Augustus 
Dorner expressed it in his way in an ad- 
dress delivered in 1904 before the Protestant 
Union on "The Christian Doctrine Accord- 
ing to the Present State of Theological 
Science" — he should have said more cor- 
rectly: "According to the Rationalism of 
the Eighteenth Century" — Christianity is 
the absolute religion, "provided its kernel 
coincides with the rational, universally ac- 
cepted form of religion — with the ideal of 
religion — when in it that is perceived as 
essential which remains the same in all its 
historic forms." 

For this conception the historical in 
Christianity has only the value of the 
symbol of continuous ideas of universal 
natural religion. Can we be surprised 
that clear thinkers, without any regard 
for ecclesiastical prejudices and traditions, 
put aside the symbolical cover as a super- 
fluous burden, yea, as an untrue cover ? Of 
what benefit is an indirect path to God- 



For Communion With God? 13 

communion through Jesus, what is the use of 
a Christian husk of religion, if one can have 
religion itself if the direct way to com- 
munion with God stands open ? In his rough 
manner Kathoff, who in a certain sense takes 
a true position against rationalists of the 
Bousset sort : that is, "rather no Jesus at all 
than yours," in his work The Religion of the 
Modern Man (Jena-Leipzig, 1905, p. 102), 
uses the brutal expression : "a God who should 
be believed, because learned men assert that 
the son of a carpenter in Palestine believed 
on him two thousand years ago — is a God 
which does not deserve the printer's ink 
which is used on his account." Of course 
this blasphemy of the former monist 
preacher is at the same time a strange folly. 
One is not to believe in God because Jesus 
believed on him, for the work of Jesus rested 
on this, that in the ages before him, belief in 
God already existed. But this is the mean- 
ing of the life-work of Jesus ; that in him as 
the essential revelation of God, the Creator 
of heaven and earth manifested himself to 
humanity as heavenly Father, and that he, 
as the only begotten Son, mediated com- 
munion with the heavenly Father. 



14 Do We Need Christ 

Do we need this revelation and this 
mediatorship of the historical Jesus? Or, 
is the true religion of immediate communion 
with God without any history ? This is the 
question. 

In the first place, the fact holds good here : 
that religion, as a real, vital power, with- 
out history, does not exist at all. With 
full right the example has been repeatedly 
chosen : no one can have a fruit tree without 
selecting an apple tree or pear tree, plum 
tree or cherry tree. No one can say : I will 
have no fruit tree, no coniferous tree, no 
oak, no lime tree; I want a tree which has 
nothing of these. I want the tree in itself — 
a tree of reality; and thus a living religion 
exists only in the real religious. To be sure 
religion, as such, is at the bottom of all con- 
crete religions, but to bring it to light is the 
theoretical task of religious philosophy. 
But from religious philosophy there never 
comes a living religiousness; much, rather, 
belongs to concrete religions. Religious phil- 
osophy reflects on the existing religions and 
their work, but procreates no religious life. 
Piety exists in natural religions ; sometimes, 
as in the Hindu, very much. But natural re- 



For Communion With God? 15 

ligion cannot establish conviction; it may- 
expand in natural growth, but it does no 
missionary work, it cannot assert itself for 
any length of time over against the world- 
religions, for which reason Max Miiller pre- 
dicted the inevitable decay of the Hindu 
religion. Only in religions which have their 
root in a definite foundation of religion does 
there rush forth the fresh spring of personal 
communion with God. 

The practical impotency of religious phil- 
osophy becomes obvious also when we ask 
those who wish to reduce Christianity to uni- 
versal, natural religion, what this universal, 
natural religion is. Augustus Dorner, who 
wishes to trace Christianity back to it, must 
confess that a difference of opinion arises at 
once when we consider its meaning and con- 
tent. When Hartmann assured us that the 
historical foundations of a religion could 
never give the assurance of conviction which 
the religious consciousness needs, the coun- 
ter-question is not only allowed, but neces- 
sary : Can it rest on philosophical construc- 
tions? A hundred times less! And, if we 
wished philosophical foundations, to whom 
of the philosophers, contradicting each other, 



1 6 Do We Need Christ 

should we go ? The inability of philosophy 
in the present time along productive lines is 
illustrated by its clinging to natural science, 
by eclecticism, and by the preponderance 
of the history of philosophy over the real 
work of thinking. But, if it were really 
more valuable than it is at the present, there 
is not nor can there be a fixed philosophy, 
not even a fixed religious philosophy. As 
soon as one leaves the firm ground of 
biblical revelation all the old mutually 
antagonistic world-views over which think- 
ers since times immemorial have quarreled, 
at once reappear. Pantheism in its chang- 
ing, unsettled forms, ever springing up anew 
from the activity of thought, from a feel- 
ing of nature, from a sense of world-woe 
or of self-loss; deism in its various forms 
of expression which arose at the period of 
the Aufklarung in opposition to existing 
systems of religions ; theism in its imagina- 
ble blending of color, always however some- 
how conditioned by biblical revelation — all 
these come before us and not one of the 
manifold philosophical systems is able to 
create a vital religion. Perfectly unfruitful 
in this respect — impotent in themselves, they 



For Communion With God? 17 

can do nothing but criticise existing histori- 
cal religions. In this, their critical attitude, 
which with many philosophers is besides 
very doubtful, they ask the individual in 
Christendom, how much of Christianity he 
wishes to retain. Thus, in Christendom, no 
man has universal, natural religion, but all 
those who do not wish to stand on Christian 
ground and yet desire to retain religion, have 
w T hat may be called an "abatement-religion" 
— that is, they stand in greater or lesser ap- 
proach to or distance from Christian truth. 
This fact cannot be illustrated better than 
by Haeckel's Riddle of the Universe. As is 
known, Haeckel is at the present time a late 
representative of that sturdy materialism of 
brief thoughts and quick resolutions which 
has been outridden long ago and scientifi- 
cally overcome. He is a declared enemy of 
Christianity, an ardent fanatic of the blind- 
est hatred of all religion, yet he would pre- 
serve morals ; that morality which he sees in 
the equilibrium of self-love and love of 
neighbor. This golden, moral law he finds 
in the statement of Jesus : "Thou shalt love 
thy neighbor as thyself!" In this most 
important and highest commandment, mo- 



1 8 Do We Need Christ 

nistic ethics, he thinks, fully agree with 
Christian ethics. What folly! What are 
monistic ethics? If man is nothing but a 
higher genus of animal, and yet the animal 
has no moral obligation ; if humanity has no 
God above it, no heaven before it, no divine 
image and no inborn conscience in it, no 
foundation of eternity under it, what remains 
of monistic ethics beyond the known state- 
ment: humanity without divinity leads to 
bestiality? And, when this atheist still ac- 
knowledges Christian morality within cer- 
tain bounds, what else is this but an in- 
voluntary acknowledgment of the Christ 
whom he indeed denies, whom he opposes, 
whom he imagines he can shake off, but of 
whom he cannot fully rid himself, as no one, 
whose mental life has formed itself on 
Christian ground, whose spiritual life re- 
ceived its stamp in the realm of Christendom, 
in the psychological continuance of his char- 
acter and his mode of thinking, can ever 
plainly and entirely divest himself of, nor of 
all and every influence of the holy life- 
sphere which came from and belongs to 
Jesus Christ ! Riehl says : "A modern, seem- 
ingly irreligious humanity, nevertheless, takes 



For Communion With God? 19 

root finally in the soil of Christian love 
which, in the dark centuries, already first 
taught to anticipate, afterward to know, all 
men as brethren, as equal children of God, 
as equally in need of redemption and as par- 
taking of the like redemption." 

Whoever, like Riehl, has his vision sharp- 
ened by historical education for the origins 
of mental factors, and is therefore able 
to perceive them in their singularity, sees 
in all historically important phenomena 
their religiously dependent character. To 
illustrate this fact by a universally intelli- 
gible observation: One can at once affirm 
of every philosopher, whether his training 
of thought was received on Catholic or on 
Protestant ground; and even of scholars 
who, at least, want to know anything of 
religion, the fewest will deny the stamp of 
their confessional faith. If this holds good 
for confessional peculiarity, it holds good all 
the more for the larger domain of religion. 
Imagine for once such opponents of his- 
torical Christianity as Voltaire and Rous- 
seau, Strauss and Feuerbach. Such figures 
can only be understood on the soil of Chris- 
tendom ; and because their Christianity puts 



20 Do We Need Christ 

them in reciprocal action with historic 
Christianity, they were obliged to honor in 
their opposition the Christ whose work they 
opposed. Not only his disciples helped 
the glorification of Jesus Christ, but the 
Sanhedrin also which passed the sentence of 
death on him; Judas, who betrayed him; 
Pontius Pilate, who gave him up to the 
cross; the cultured and uncultured mob 
which mocked him. 

Since, then, it is evident that in the general 
relations of our mental and moral existence 
no man in Christendom can wholly withdraw 
from the influences which emanated from the 
world-renewing and the world-transforming 
power of Jesus Christ for that part of 
humanity which is put under his influence, it 
will be seen that this holds good also in a 
preeminent degree in personal piety. All 
who wish in some way to cultivate a living, 
personal communion with God, whether con- 
scious of it or not, are influenced through 
Christ, in the nature of their communion 
with God. As we can only fully understand 
the civil-social conditions of our native coun- 
try from a comparison with the conditions 
of other countries, so also, we can under- 



For Communion With God? 21 

stand the peculiarity of Christian religious- 
ness only by a comparison with a different 
kind of piety. The Buddhist has a religion 
without prayer, and so far as he practices 
prayer, it is self-reflection or a contradictory 
invocation of subordinate world-powers ; for 
his religion is pantheistic, the self-redemp- 
tion of asceticism. The prayer of the Mo- 
hammedan comes up to ceremonial injunc- 
tion, and his faith is submission to the neces- 
sity of a divine decree. The Jewish religious 
exercise is severe bondage to ritual legality, 
and, in spite of all religious struggling, there 
exists the uncertainty as to the sufficiency of 
the performance and its uselessness with 
reference to the obtainment of divine 
acknowledgment. 

But to Christianity belongs free faith 
in the active ruling of a divine providence 
which does not neutralize the power of free- 
dom, but releases it. Here lives the power 
of prayer which confidently accommodates 
itself to the ways of the living God, and yet 
humbly brings all requests before him in the 
certainty that the Almighty has the course 
of the world in his hands. Here exists the 
certainty that, though wrong seems to tri- 



22 Do We Need Christ 

umph and malice often puts down the good 
and good ones, yet, over the good or bad will 
of the millions stands a higher Will, whose 
world-government leads the development of 
the human race to his ultimate purpose. 
Here prevails the idea that the course of the 
world is not aimless ; that moral action is not 
fruitless and unsuccessful, but tends toward 
the final end of the kingdom of God, which 
is appointed by God. Here prevails the cer- 
tainty that our life is not merely a confused 
dream, or the popping up of a bubble which 
soon explodes, or even a misery which is to 
be cast off as quickly as possible; that life 
does not end here, but that there is a seed- 
time on earth for an eternal harvest, a time 
of preparation for eternal life. 

Thus, with a high idealism which fills the 
whole of existence with supernatural content, 
with a radiant light, with a joy glorifying 
every suffering and animating every action, 
the Christian view of God and the world 
raises the members of Christendom to a 
value transcending the natural earthly ex- 
istence through which value the mental life 
receives a rich content, and the spiritual life 
a safe support. 



For Communion With God? 23 

"The good God greets many, who thank 
him not/' says a well-known proverb : "He 
maketh his sun to rise- on the evil and on the 
good, and sendeth rain on the just and on 
the unjust." How much thankfulness 
reapeth his infinite love which is new every 
morning? Jesus Christ fills many with 
spiritual good who refuse the hand which 
offers it. And yet — aside from the sug- 
gestions which science and art have received 
through him, the freedom and uplift which 
he has given to the poor and oppressed, the 
transforming influence exercised upon so- 
ciety and thus upon social order, the organi- 
zation which he gave to the world of nations, 
by means of charity — what rich religionism, 
what spiritual content of Christianity, which 
they oppose or deny, just because they are 
provoked at it, forms the background of 
their world-view ? Let them refuse it ! 
Nevertheless because they refuse it, but con- 
tinually busy themselves with it, they are by 
reason of that very fact kept from falling 
into mere nothing and thus becoming empty 
of all idealism. 

But that which brings about such far- 
reaching and comprehensive effects, puts be- 



24 Do We Need Christ 

fore the more serious mind the question, 
How is it to act? for such a mind does 
not receive spiritual effects as accidental, 
but arranges its relation to them in a 
conscious manner. It cannot pass by the 
question: Do I need Jesus Christ for 
obtaining a living, personal communion 
with God? How often has the statement 
of Fichte been repeated here, if Jesus 
would now come again, he would care 
little whether his person is mentioned or not, 
provided his cause was advanced ! And yet, 
it is a fact that the peculiar essence of Chris- 
tianity is so bound to the person of Jesus 
Christ, that the mental life belonging to the 
Christian religion loses at once its power, as 
soon as his person steps back or is forgotten ; 
yea, it forfeits all Christian content and 
character if his person is eliminated. But, 
as soon as the picture of Jesus again comes 
to a vivid representation and realization, the 
same revival-power again emanates from 
him. Consequently, one does not get away 
from the question covering the person of 
Jesus Christ! It preserves its lasting im- 
portance at all times ; and, as stated before, 
the motive force of the religious question of 



For Communion With God? 25 

the present expresses itself also just in this, 
that, though one may not feel satisfied with 
the ecclesiastical formularization of the 
worth of his person, one cannot refrain from 
seeking with incessant effort after new 
forms in which the mystery of his person 
may be expressed. Riehl says in the book 
referred to : "The person of Christ for nearly 
two thousand years continually led to theo- 
logical controversies, to religious party- 
days. In the conception of the person of 
Christ, the confessional believer differs from 
the sensationalist, from the rationalist, and 
all three again from the unbeliever ; the theo^ 
logian from the philosopher; church-his- 
torical periods and confessions separate, 
yea, in finer shades numberless differences 
in Christian belief become manifest, as soon 
as we put a definite question concerning the 
person of Christ, and as soon as the inter- 
rogated — which is more difficult — answers it 
honestly and definitely." Therefore, we put 
the question : What have we in him ? Why 
do we need him? 

The average man thinks that though he is 
remote from communion with God and does 
not know the way to obtain it, it can never- 



26 Do We Need Christ 

theless be easily realized. Whence comes 
this ? It has its cause in naturalism which, 
since the seventeenth century, greatly as- 
serted itself and rapidly spread. To be sure 
the rise of practical naturalism required no 
special philosophical theory ; it existed at all 
times and runs in the blood of the natural 
man. It is the immediate expression of the 
natural tendency of the flesh to live after the 
flesh. But naturalism sought and found a 
public power on the basis of theories which, 
by shaking off divine revelation, directed 
man to seek the sufficient strength of his self- 
satisfaction in the capacities of his natural 
psychical condition ; to get the means for un- 
derstanding the world and ruling the world 
from the treasuries of his own reason; to 
realize the ideal humanity by exertions of 
the will. This naturalism developed itself 
in the nineteenth century in various systems 
of a pantheistic and deistic character, and 
found its climax in materialism. Though 
the cultured may be ashamed of the material- 
ism of Haeckel; though a few only may 
openly profess the pantheism of Schopen- 
hauer ; though the pantheism of Paulsen may 
find some recognition, but few real adher- 



For Communion With God? zj 

ents, though Hartmann's pending pessimism, 
which wishes to combine belief in provi- 
dence with the great Unknown, may capti- 
vate many, but convince only a few ; though 
Nietzsche's power of persuasion which blinds 
immaturity, may have lost its charm — the 
disposition still lives in large circles, even 
without dependence on certain theories, 
to regard human acts as necessary ex- 
pression of that which man became as the 
product of his parents and his environment. 
Paulsen may have contradicted the im- 
moral in the book: his naturalistic pan- 
theism includes, nevertheless, the dissolv- 
ing of the difference between good and evil. 
And, if philosophical naturalism is scarcely 
wholly consistent, the practical is naturally 
still more inconsistent. One does not object 
to hearing the word sin spoken in the pulpit, 
but when heard in daily life, one has but a 
proud shrug for it, or an air of smiling supe- 
riority. But is this to be superior — to deny 
that which makes man a man, that which 
gives him superiority over the animal — the 
conscience? True, conscience may become 
an uncomfortable admonisher; but a man 
without this holy gift of God — conscience — 



28 Do We Need Christ 

is no more man, but sinks to the level of the 
beast. Conscience distinctly speaks the 
sharp language of difference between good 
and evil, and with it of coming everlasting 
judgment. And he can dream of no com- 
munion with God who knows that sin exists 
in him, that his guilt separates him from 
the righteous and holy God. In opposition 
to the holy penitence of the Old Testament 
psalms and to the merciful call to repentance 
of Jesus who offers the gospel to the sinner 
that repents and to him only (Luke 15. 7), 
there stands a religious superficiality which 
knows nothing of the power of sin which 
separates from God, and which thus sinks 
beneath even such an animistic religion as 
the ancient Babylonian (with its penitential 
prayers ) . But when theologians like Weinel 
endeavor to eliminate the "retrospective ele- 
ments" in Christianity (repentance) ; when 
theologians like Bousset declare the Pauline 
contrast between sin and grace to be un- 
tenable, when such theologians will not begin 
the preaching of the gospel with the awaken- 
ing of the sense of sin, but put aside the 
objective reconciliation of Jesus Christ, and 
put all emphasis on moral self-education, it 



For Communion With God? 29 

cannot be perceived what evangelical ele- 
ment is still left in this teaching, which 
throws everything Christian into the boiler 
of naturalism. 

The deepest essence of the Reformation 
consisted in this, that Luther felt the full 
seriousness of the power of sin which pre- 
vented communion with God, the dreadful- 
ness of self-condemnation before God. 
Mediaeval mysticism ventured the boldest 
eagle-flight of divine love for God soaring 
up to heaven, without distinctly feeling the 
curling feathers of the consciousness of sin, 
only to suffer for the flight of the soul by an 
ever repeated downfall. Despite religious 
height Mysticism lacked moral power and 
clearness. Luther clearly saw the chains of 
sin which paralyzed every independent flight, 
and therefore found the power which breaks 
down the barrier separating us from God, in 
the Son of God, who came down from 
heaven ; who brought to us the love of God 
as very grace ; who obtained the forgiveness 
of sins and restored communion with God 
in the gift of the Holy Spirit. This, there- 
fore, is and remains the way to communion 
with God, and indeed is the only one 



30 Do We Need Christ 

possible way, redemption through Jesus 
Christ. 

No independent religious elevation and no 
spontaneous ethical education goes beyond 
the sphere of naturalness. That "which is 
born of the flesh is flesh/' Communion 
with the eternal God in the kingdom of God, 
or in the kingdom of heaven, is possible only 
in our elevation above the natural. And one 
cannot obtain the kingdom of God by as- 
cending into heaven, but only by receiv- 
ing him who brought it down to us — Jesus 
Christ. Of course the way opens only to 
him who knows what sin is. This is the 
condition for receiving the gospel. Whoever 
will not or may not or cannot see what sin 
is, can of course feel no need of him who 
opened the way to the sanctuary of his 
Father's heart. Jesus came to call sinners, 
not the righteous to repentance. But who- 
ever feels himself a sinner — and one would 
think that psychologically considered it 
argued a degree of dullness not to recognize 
the fact — whoever realizes that unforgiven 
sin hinders communion with God — and one 
would think that he only would be void of 
this knowledge who has no sound idea of 



For Communion With God? 31 

God — how will he find it possible to enter 
into communion with the holy and righteous 
God? 

In the Jewish religion the uncertainty 
of the forgiveness of sin is truly affecting. 
Settlement of the profit and loss account of 
good works and of failures, as Weber shows 
in his book (Jewish Theology, Leipzig, 
1897), always leaves the orthodox Jew un- 
certain as to the result. The Mohammedan's 
hope of paradise rests on the hollow arro- 
gance of the adherents of "the prophet/' 
connected with sad deadness of conscience 
and indifference to the most crying sins. 

The Buddhist, denying existence in the 
self-redemption of asceticism, knows only 
annihilation in Nirvana as an end. He needs 
therefore no communion with the living God 
in our sense. He aspires not after the 
strengthening but the abolition of person- 
ality — a sad conception of Asiatic apathy. 
But he who truly wishes to find his person- 
ality, must also know that only in the abso- 
lute personality can he find the lasting value 
of personality. By finding God, one can 
truly find himself. And one only truly finds 
God in and through Jesus Christ, who, be- 



32 Do We Need Christ 

cause uniting in his person the human and 
the divine, is able to build a bridge between 
time and eternity, whereby the carnal man 
becomes a man of God. It is Christ Jesus 
who tears down, through the merits of his 
life and death, the obstructing barriers which 
separate the sinning man, who is in duty 
bound to obey the Creator, from the Creator 
who is at the same time both judge and 
rewarder. 

Harnack, in his book on the Essence of 
Christianity, described religion as an imme- 
diate relation between God and the human 
soul, in the sense that between them no one 
has anything to do. As is known it was 
Augustine who defined as the theme of re- 
ligion : "God and the human soul, otherwise 
nothing !" But how little Bousset was en- 
titled to refer to it for doing away with the 
mediatorship of Jesus, can be seen from this, 
that Augustine, according to his theme, did 
not exclude the Mediator, but claimed him. 
Indeed, there exists nowhere in the wide 
domain of the history of religion an imme- 
diate relation of the human soul to the 
Deity. 

Thus, in the Babylonian religion, man ad- 



For Communion With God? 33 

dresses himself not directly to the high gods, 
but through the mediation of demoniacal 
powers, whose help he obtains through the 
priests of witchcraft. Rites and formulas, 
prayers and sacrifices, ceremonies and cults, 
performance and asceticism, hierarchy and 
law — anything and often very many things 
stand between God and the soul of man. 
How could a Jew think of communion 
with God without the mediation of the 
law ? How could a Moslem without observ- 
ing the Koran? But Christianity has im- 
mediate communion with God and the 
soul of man, because the incarnate mediator 
brings it about by virtue of the activity of 
divine grace. This as the doctrine of justi- 
fication teaches, excludes even moral acts as 
means of obtaining salvation which, accord- 
ing to Harnack, Wrede, and Bousset mediate 
communion with God. Mysticism, void of 
history, believes that it is possible to culti- 
vate immediate communion with God with- 
out a mediator — but in this it denies the im- 
portance of the ethical factor. In opposi- 
tion to this the rationalism of Harnack, 
Wrede, and Bousset asserts nominally an 
immediate God-communion in the form of 



34 Do We Need Christ 

moral self-redemption; but it obtains no 
God-communion. Self-governing morality 
is here nothing more than the background of 
a lifeless, colorless idea of God, which, with 
Harnack, is only a deistical, and with Bous- 
set, a pantheistic idea. Personal communion 
with the holy God is something else than 
acceptance or possession of an idea of God ! 
A proof for the truth of Christianity is 
contained in its specific particularity which 
explains itself only in revelation, I might 
say: in its not being invented (2 Cor. 2. 9). 
Luther said in his book on the Unf ree Will : 
"God works both which is childish, or mun- 
dane, or human, but divine, surpassing the 
human perceptive faculty/' This peculiarity, 
transcendental for the worldly mind, but ex- 
pressed in the doctrine of the divinity of 
Christ, is founded in this, that Jesus Christ, 
as the only begotten Son of God, or, as the 
Son of man (which is substantially the same, 
John 5. 2j), who, according to his self- 
testimony, is of divine origin, can alone lead 
men to heaven, because he is from heaven 
(John 3. 13) . All other religions come from 
below, because their founders are from be- 
low. They are the outcome of the natural 



For Communion With God? 35 

process of religious-historical development. 
Jesus Christ alone comes from above, and 
he only, as such, is the bearer of the absolute 
revelation. Revelation is also in other re- 
ligions. All advances of religious experience 
and knowledge come about through the con- 
tact of the human soul with God, which 
opens for us his life-supplies and sugges- 
tions. But this revelation in the general 
sphere of the life of nations does not ex- 
clude deficiencies of human receptivity to 
the divine, darkening of vision, limits of 
devotion. Pure, perfect revelation we have 
only in the self-manifestation of God, in 
w r hich he not only gives suggestions to 
men of susceptibility (John 3. 31), but ac- 
tually discloses himself by sinking his life 
from above into a pure organ of his glory 
(John 1. 14; 5. 26). 

Jesus, born, grown up, and educated 
like a man, was humanly like us. But, 
according to his inner essence, he called 
himself (John 6. 33, 35) the True Bread 
which came down from heaven and 
giveth Life unto the world. And only when 
he is thus the only begotten Son from the 
bosom of the Father, we have indeed a 



36 Do We Need Christ 

positive truth, an opening to the Fatherly 
heart of God, an access to the upper sanc- 
tuary, an end to our struggles and endeavors, 
a sure salvation and an unshaken certitude. 
And if we give him up who said of himself : 
"And no man knoweth the Father save the 
Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will re- 
veal him," the heaven remains forever silent 
to our questions, our longing dies away aim- 
lessly in space. Who* will open the door of 
heaven, if God does not open it to us ? Who 
will show us the way of our destination, if 
God does not pave it ? Who* will give us a 
firm position in the world and an ever satis- 
fying certainty of our attitude toward God, 
the world, and men, unless God's eternal 
light lights up our darkness? Are we to 
trust in human founders of religion like 
Buddha and Zarathustra, Mani, and Moham- 
med ? They were sinful and erring men like 
ourselves. We overlook their errors and 
judge their weaknesses. Among other 
fashionable follies, through ignorance and 
lack of judgment, the founding of Buddhist 
communions may for a time obtain passing 
results in America and Europe ; English re- 
ligious sport may for a time take a lively in- 



For Communion With God? 37 

terest in Mohammedanism which belongs to 
confused romanticism and has little to do 
with the reality of Islam ; Mormonism even 
may bring over a few infatuated ones to 
the only humbug-religion which exists — in 
Christendom no one can seriously undertake 
to refer to strange founders of religion, be- 
cause all are subject to historical and philo- 
sophical critique. But, if one refuses to ac- 
cept the only holy, sinless One who ever 
walked on this earth without being con- 
taminated by its dust, nothing remains but to 
put every one on himself ; to put in the place 
of the absolute revelation of God the aspira- 
tion of each individual after truth, and leave 
to the individual the restoration of his com- 
munion with God. Instead of the all-com- 
prising religion of the world which embraces 
uncounted millions, we would then have 
millions of religions, in which humanity 
would split into atoms. To this individual- 
ism, exaggerated to absurdity, corresponds 
modern theological skepticism and agnosti- 
cism, which, while showing a mania to be 
as "modern" as possible, still wishes to re- 
tain with bashful effort some Christianity. 
Naumann, with the talent peculiar to him to 



38 Do We Need Christ 

say the most confused things, as if they were 
the clearest clearness, has expressed in his 
letters on religion that which is typical of 
this religious vagueness. 

Philanthropism, as represented by Rous- 
seau in his Emile, wished a purely indi- 
vidual subjective religion by means of which 
every one was to restore his relation to God 
entirely for himself, according to his own im- 
pulses, dispositions, and inclinations. Very 
convenient for human sovereignty ! As if, in 
the relation between God and man, the ques- 
tion were not how the All-powerful will have 
the relation restored ! Is a mere man — dust 
from dust — free to treat God as an object of 
his will ? This atomism of the individual will 
would yield a self-made religion in chaotic 
confusion of boundless variety. In practice 
this unlimited subjectivism is found in the 
free-religions and German Catholic congre- 
gations, which, on Protestant soil, emanated 
from the Sintenis-Uhlich movement, on 
Catholic soil from the Rouge-Gerske move- 
ment. What is the belief of these congrega- 
tions? By allowing its members variety of 
all possible views, but offering no positive 
stability of any definite religious view, or of 



For Communion With God? 39 

any expressed confession it totters between 
approachment to biblical theism and ma- 
terialistic atheism. Yea, the tendency would 
be given up to the yawning abyss of the sad- 
dest emptiness, were it not for its opposition 
to Christianity, its zeal against "church 
tyranny' ' and obligation to dogma, its at- 
tacks upon the Bible and hatred of Christ 
which give it the semblance of reality. 
What have these people to do with Chris- 
tianity who have turned their back on the 
Christian Church ? And yet, almost all lec- 
tures which they announce, almost all writ- 
ings which they publish, deal with Chris- 
tianity. Take away this polemical content, 
and what is left to interest a man? In ac- 
cordance with this emptiness is the continual 
decrease of these congregations. Man can- 
not live by rejecting the bread which reality 
offers, unless something better, or* at least a 
genuine substitute, is offered. 

Religion is indeed the most individual 
thing, but it is also the most universal. Very 
few have originality in religious matters, and 
those who imagine they have mostly imagine 
it. Though the relation to God is also a 
relation of the individual human soul to the 



40 Do We Need Christ 

Lord, it is at the same time also a relation 
of humanity to the Creator of the world. 
On this account in religious matters every 
one belongs from the start to a certain com- 
munion-circle by which the form of his re- 
ligious consciousness is determined. He 
may leave it, but only to be caught up at once 
by a new tendency. In the main there exists 
no individually, self-made religion. Above 
all religions stands "the" religion. In re- 
ligion there exists a bond of communion be- 
tween God and us ere we become fully con- 
scious of it or affirm it. This communion- 
bond is objective, founded in this, that we 
are God's creatures. But when the com- 
munion-relation in many religions is per- 
verted by human error, we cannot at all pass 
by the question concerning the purity of a 
relation of God to us which has not been 
disturbed by a weak human mediation. If 
in the face of the variety of religions the true 
religion is a matter of humanity, the wish for 
truth must consider whether God has not 
somewhere brought about communion with 
humanity in a manner intended by him. Is 
every religion only an aimless striving up- 
ward to which there is no divine answer? 



For Communion With God? 41 

God, who created in his image the human 
race in the first Adam, has also put before 
us the perfection of the divine image in the 
second Adam — this is the content of the 
gospel, and only under the supposition of 
the objective divine sending of Jesus, is there 
a gospel at all. Thus and only thus is he the 
organizer of humanity into a humanity of 
God. If there is only one God, humanity, 
too, is one in like relation to the Almighty 
Father, and then there is also only one true 
religion, that very one in which he himself 
opened his Fatherly heart to his children in 
his only begotten Son. 

Why is it that in our day the message of 
the union of deity and humanity in the in- 
carnate God is not understood by men, that 
they seek new ways to come to a union with 
God? 

Art is the mirage of its time. What does 
it show in the present? A boisterous, rest- 
less craving for something new, unheard of, 
something that never existed. It is not as 
if former times had not produced beautiful 
forms. But whether the former was beauti- 
ful or not — a change is wanted. Originality 
at any rate, even at the price of losing the 



42 Do We Need Christ 

noble and beautiful symmetry! And, 
though one should ultimately arrive again at 
the old, it should be a new invention. Who 
does not think of Schiller's : 

The world grows old and becomes young again, 
Yet man always anticipates improvement. 

In religion also, one would like to avoid 
the ancient paths beaten a thousand times 
and discover new ones. And does not one 
consider that for the ornament of life noth- 
ing else is offered to us than flowers which 
blossomed for humanity for thousands of 
years. Should the blase once get tired of 
the flower-work, will the desire of innova- 
tion discover a compensation ? For the orna- 
mentation of the surroundings of our houses 
we have nothing but the green and the blos- 
soms of trees and shrubs and the magnificent 
bloom of the garden-plots. How would a 
diseased state of mind help in trying to make 
it otherwise? We are placed in God's order 
of creation and, in spite of all the change of 
times, circumstances, views, taste, we are 
bound to certain unchanged orders. The 
stable essence of human nature is in itself also 
unchanged in all epochs and in all types of 



For Communion With God? 43 

nations. Its needs and wants, its inclinations 
and aberrations, its shortcomings and exer- 
tions are the same. But, on this account, the 
desire for salvation and peace is also per- 
fectly the same as is the cry of conscience 
out of the distress of sin. For this reason, 
in full conformity to law, periods of a re- 
turn to Christianity always follow times of 
apostasy from it. To many, the recently 
discovered seems as something new. Thus, 
today Jesus Christ meets many in old Chris- 
tendom who when they find him find him 
with full charm of newness. When they 
apprehend him as their Redeemer, it seems 
to them as if he came before them in the 
same newness of heavenly originality and 
divine revelation as once before he came to 
the people of Judea with the message : "I am 
the light of the w r orld ; he that f olloweth me 
shall not walk in darkness, but shall have 
the light of life." 

But when, in the midst of Christendom, 
many must find Jesus Christ as new, con- 
sidering the sermons which they never 
heard, is there not also somewhere a fault 
with the Church? There are doubtless, 
very great shortcomings. It can indeed be 



44 Do We Need Christ 

hardly understood when, with an appeal to 
the reformation-doctrine concerning the two 
signs of the true church, pure preaching of 
the gospel and the administration of the sac- 
raments according to their institution, back- 
ward heads imagine that for effectual in- 
fluence on life the same forms of preaching 
and administration of the sacraments should 
suffice as in the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries. In those times the religious factor 
still governed all ranks of society down- 
ward ; and the spiritual interests which were 
turned to science and art, were limited to 
small circles. Besides, the ministers were al- 
most the only ones who were able to speak 
freely. Whoever wished to enjoy a lively 
lecture had to go to church. And today? 
The minister has long ago been crowded out 
of the monopoly of free discourse. The 
number of lectures is legion — quantitatively 
considered ; and qualitatively considered, the 
spirit which speaks out of the majority 
could all the more say : "Our name is legion, 
for we are many." The eloquence which is 
here displayed is often captivating, variously 
fascinating. But religion is for larger circles 
crowded out of the position which rules the 



For Communion With God? 45 

world of culture. In some ranks it is con- 
sidered as absolutely interdicted to say a 
word about religion. Still worse, however, 
than religious enmity is that deadly indif- 
ference toward the elimination of the re- 
ligious factor not only from public life, but 
also from the relations of social intercourse. 
How may one in sluggish dreaming still con- 
tinue to lisp the scheme of days that are 
past? If the people will not go to church, 
the church must go to them. The preaching 
of the gospel has not only one form, it has 
the most manifold forms. Jesus preached 
in the synagogue and in the market ; in the 
green pasture and in the boat by the sea, in 
the bustle of the city and in the desert. 
Through Galilee and Judea, in Peraea and 
Samaria, everywhere he followed those in 
need of salvation — in order to seek and save 
that which was lost. 

And Paul? In Christian liberty he be- 
came unto the Jews as a Jew, to gain the 
Jews : To them that are under the law, as 
under the law, that he might gain them 
that were under the law. To them that are 
without law, as without law, to gain them 
that are without law. To the weak he be- 



46 Do We Need Christ 

came as weak, to gain the weak. Thus he 
was made all things to all men to save some 
by all means. Not every one is a Paul. 
But, as he could mold his voice and tried it 
in seeking and saving love to save those 
that were lost, so the Church must be able 
to mold her voice to be made all things to 
all. To many the preaching of Jesus Christ 
is repulsive even as to its content, when it is 
done in the teaching method of past times. 

Christ is the living, ever new Presence. 
Many have no desire to hear of Jesus when 
he is presented to them in the dress of tra- 
ditional doctrine. The "moderns" seek their 
strength in this, that they oppose historical 
clearness of palpable every day reality to 
dogmatical stiffness of doctrinaire formulas. 
But of their statements one must neces- 
sarily say they are taken from Palestinian 
national life and inserted into the Jewish 
history of religion. Human historical reality 
of daily observation is placed before our eyes 
in a popular manner. Such Jewish reform- 
ers might perhaps have lived in Galilee ; but 
no one will be able to convince us, or even 
make clear to us, that the world-transform- 
ing effects which actually emanated from 



For Communion With God? 47 

Jesus Christ, could ever have emanated from 
such a country rabbi on his own account, or 
that the life-renewing effects which Jesus 
continually produces in human souls, as 
good as dead, could have proceeded from a 
simple Jew, who was nothing but a natural 
man. 1 

Effects are conditioned by the merit of 
personality. The effects of Jesus are 
comprehensive, far-reaching, never grow- 
ing old, operative in ever new manner. It is 
a foolish phrase to assert that the teaching 
of the God-man is no more opportune; op- 
portune in the sense that it once had the 



1 Hermann Hesse in his book " Unter Rad," describes 
the lecture room of a liberal preacher (p. 65) : " Dreaming 
mysticism and persistent gloomy meditation were banished 
in this place; banished also was the naive heart-theology 
which over the chasms of science bends in love and com- 
passion to the thirsting soul of the people. In place of 
this, Bible criticism was zealously cultivated and search 
was made for the historical Christ, who runs from the 
mouth of modern theologians like water, but slips like an 
eel through the fingers. It is in theology as with other things. 
There is a theology which is an art, and another which 
is science, or at least, strives to be such. Thus it has always 
been, and the scientists have always neglected the old 
wine over the new bottles; whereas, the artists, carelessly 
abiding by many an external error, become comforters and 
messengers of joy to many. It is the unequal struggle 
between criticism and creation, science and art, whereby 
that is always right, without being of service to any one* 
whereas this again and again scatters the seed of faith, 
love, comfort and of beauty and the idea of eternity, and 
always finds a good soil. For life is stronger than death, 
and faith is mightier than doubt." 



48 Do We Need Christ 

sympathy of the world and pleased the great 
masses. The gospel never was merely op- 
portune and cannot be, for it is everlasting. 
But the gospel in a good sense is opportune. 
It ever becomes new by being preached in a 
manner intelligible to the times by living 
personalities in whom it becomes spirit and 
power. That is opportune which has re- 
liance on victory and the strength to assert 
itself. Rothe once justly remarked : "When 
one says it is the demand of the time, he 
appeals to the incompetent public, which al- 
ways places confused impulses, inclinations, 
and disinclinations in the place of reasons. 
When the Israelites preferred to worship a 
calf rather than the invisible God, they also 
thought that it was a demand of the time." 
Where the old rationalism from the end of 
the eighteenth and beginning of the nine- 
teenth centuries is at present rehashed again, 
it is set forth in a completely untrue manner 
— as the newest achievement of science. 
What naturalistic unbelief refuses, it tries 
to present as incompatible with the results 
of modern investigation, though in reality, 
the newer critical investigation is nothing 
more than the offspring of unbelief which, in 



For Communion With God? 49 

ancient heathen polemics, as by Celsus of 
the second century, exerted exactly the same 
criticism on Jesus. But, where the need of 
redemption becomes alive in a man, the re- 
deemer is also opportune. For where the 
truth of belief in God and the need of abso- 
lute revelation exists there is no difference 
between the obsolete and the modern. 

And just as little does this revelation 
exist for the denial of the need of a mediator 
between God and man. The forms may 
change as to the manner of proclaiming the 
saving importance of Jesus, of exhibiting 
his worth and work. Entirely wrong is the 
pretense that new times demand a new 
Christ. Is the sin of the twentieth century 
different from that of the first century? Is 
the need of redemption of the twentieth 
century different from that of the first cen- 
tury? Our sin, said Luther, is no painted 
sin; wherefore a painted Saviour is of no 
avail. 1 

The invented Christ of modern programs, 
who is to be adapted at any price to the bare 



1 In the exposition of Psalm 51, Luther says: "From 
the mistake that one neither knows nor understands what 
sin is, comes, as usual, still another mistake, that one can 
neither know nor understand what grace is." 



50 Do We Need Christ 

reality of Jewish life, and on that account is 
as far from the real historical Christ of the 
gospels as the earth is from heaven, may as 
a mind-picture agree with the dissolution of 
the misery of sin in visionary haze. But,* 
where real distress and misery of sin awakes 
in the roused conscience, the dreams of self- 
redemption and this "modern Jesus" myth 
might fail. The question then remains : Is 
this inevitable self-accusation to end in 
despair of God and one's self ? Or, is there 
in reality a Redeemer who can drown guilt 
in the stream of divine mercy ? 

Invented arts of charlatans suffice for play- 
ing with disease, but serious weakness re- 
quires the real physician. Thus the sickness 
of humanity requires the soul-physician who 
brings salvation for every suffering. This 
Christ is the same yesterday, and today, and 
forever, as the teaching of the fourth cen- 
tury has rightly called him, the "unchange- 
able." And that this unchangeable appears as 
ever new to each new generation, is founded 
in this, that he comes to man most lovely 
in his personal working by being formed in 
those who are lively permeated by his Spirit. 
We have Jesus Christ in the New Testament 



For Communion With God? 51 

gospels and epistles — and when the critics 
fable and pretend to know other things of 
him than are recorded there, what trust- 
worthy records have they? The Christ of 
the present should be the Christ of reality; 
he can be none other. But in the documen- 
tary attestation he is for many yet a dead 
form of the past. We have Jesus Christ in 
the teaching of the Church ; and, in spite of 
all contrasts which the critics seek to es- 
tablish between the teaching of the Church 
and the New Testament, it remains, never- 
theless, a fact that the former is only the 
didactic form for the content of the latter. 
Kattenbush, a theologian of Ritschl's 
school, expressed it correctly when he said 
that by advancing discussions it has been es- 
tablished more and more, that the pretended 
contrast between the teaching of the Church 
and the New Testament does not exist 

But the Christ of the Church retains for 
many a hard theoretical character, far re- 
moved and incomprehensible. Truly re- 
ligious souls, however, understand the living 
stamp of Christ in religious personalities. 
These represent not merely a theory of Jesus 
Christ, nor do they obtrude him merely as 



52 Do We Need Christ 

an ecclesiastical law-giver or judge of legal 
morality, but they express him in religious 
power from normal life-experience, because 
their own life is hidden in God with Christ 
Jesus; so that their word of him as word 
from him, is Spirit and Life. Rousseau 
said: "Where thinking commences, feeling 
ceases." Were this so, it would mean for 
the educated (like the loss of all poetry, 
every enjoyment of art, yea, of all that 
which makes life precious) the death of all 
precious religion. What an empty, anaemic 
intellectualism is this! Christian truth re- 
quires the keenest thinking. But intellectual 
truth is meaningless without life-truth. He 
who experiences nothing in religion, has also 
nothing to say in ecclesiastical teaching; 
and, if he should nevertheless try it, he does 
not talk religion but falls into popular 
philosophy. Christian religious thinking re- 
quires for its lasting foundation an internal 
content in which Christ is a living present. 
And this brings us to the final and decisive 
point of our development. 

As I have shown in my book on The 
Essence of Christianity, besides Chris- 
tology, the doctrine of regeneration is the 



For Communion With God? 53 

most characteristic of Christianity. What 
does it mean? This, that in relation to the 
eternity-task and eternity-goal of man, a 
certain measure of fulfilling moral require- 
ments is not sufficient; that human fulfill- 
ment of the law also suffices not, because 
natural ability is incapable of fulfilling the 
divine moral law f that relative amendment 
and spontaneous development also fail to 
bridge over the chasm between time and 
eternity. That only which is in harmony 
with and worthy of eternity comes from 
eternity, and is able therefore to go into 
eternity. Hence, the Christian message of 
the kingdom of God requires of every one a 
totally new beginning of life in the course of 
the conscious life; the death of the old nat- 
ural man, the birth of a new man from God. 
In contradistinction to every form of legal- 
ism, and also to that of modern moralism as 



1 The interpretation of the Epistle to the Romans, as if 
men needed grace because they had not been able to ful- 
fill the law, but if they could have done it, they could have 
been saved through fulfillment of the law, is erroneous. 
Paul will rather say, especially Romans 4 and 42 and he ex- 
presses it clearly that, if men could have fulfilled the law, 
it would have been inadequate in relation to the eternity- 
goal, because everything human remains in the real of the 
finite, temporal, and has never the stamp of the divine; 
therefore, it cannot stand before God. Herein lies the 
fundamental condemnation of every moralism. 



54 Do We Need Christ 

represented by Harnack and Bousset, who 
conceive Christianity as a moral redemption- 
religion, thus bringing it down to the low 
level of moral self-redemption, it is peculiar 
to Christ that he does not demand anything 
which he does not give. And, with reference 
to the kingdom of God, which he brought, 
with reference to the Holy Spirit whom he 
mediated to humanity, he expressed the fact 
that no one can enter into the kingdom of 
heaven (Matt. 18. 3), yea, is not even able 
to see the kingdom of God, without funda- 
mental and radical renewing by the Holy 
Spirit which he designates as birth from 
above (John 3. 3, 5). 

The word new birth, or regeneration, is 
also found on extra-Christian soil; Brah- 
minism and Buddhism know something 
similar. But Buddhism understands by it 
only a decisive change through the knowl- 
edge of conditional resignation, self-refor- 
mation. This conversion sticks fast to 
nature. Kant adopted the term "regenera- 
tion" in his Religion Within the Bounds of 
Pure Reason; but, though he demands a 
revolution in the disposition "after the man- 
ner of the Stoa," this is for him nothing 



For Communion With God? 55 

but the direction of the volition to the fun- 
damental acknowledgment of the moral 
principle. This pretended radical new be- 
ginning means nothing more than moral 
self-reformation. In neither instance do we 
get beyond the carnal, nor can we. But 
such views are far excelled in the Christian 
doctrine of regeneration. And herein al- 
ready lies a proof of the divine origin of 
Jesus Christ. As the Son of God he bap- 
tizes from heaven with the Spirit which pro- 
ceedeth from the Father, and mediates the 
outpouring of the Holy Spirit to the new 
humanity growing out of him. To be en- 
dowed with the Spirit from above, or to be 
born of God, or to be regenerated, is one and 
the same. The idea of regeneration in the 
New Testament sense could have never 
originated in the brain of a natural man 
(1 Cor. 2. 13). Nicodemus, the highly edu- 
cated scribe, well versed in Old Testament 
prophecy, member of the Jewish Sanhedrin, 
a famous teacher in Israel, did not under- 
stand it — in spite of the Old Testament ref- 
erences to the outpouring of the Spirit and 
cleansing of the heart. And the very paral- 
lels, which are cited from the Talmud illus- 

torc. 



56 Do We Need Christ 

trating the idea of regeneration, prove how 
completely foreign it was to entire Judaism. 
In great ecclesiastical tendencies, in centuries 
of Christian doctrinal development it was not 
understood; in Catholicism it is sacramen- 
tally neutralized and thereby estranged from 
religious value. The so-called modern the- 
ology, though not unfriendly to it, does not 
know what to do with it. Conversion and 
regeneration are repulsive ideas and, so far 
as it uses them at all, it strips them of their 
biblical meaning through a new moral inter- 
pretation. And yet, in the sense of the teach- 
ing of Jesus, as in also that of the apostles, 
the fundamental view of the Pauline state- 
ment: "flesh and blood cannot inherit the 
kingdom of God," it is well established in the 
direction that the natural man, even with his 
best efforts, is fully incapable of obtaining 
the eternity-goal ; even the most righteous by 
law fails. Even this very one! The Lord 
denied justification to the self-righteousness 
of intensive pharisaic religiousness and 
morality ; but he adjudged it to the self-con- 
demnation of publican-humility. It is not 
the righteousness which is by works that ob- 
tains the kingdom of heaven, but the self- 



For Communion With God? 57 

renouncing humility which accepts divine 
mercy as a divine gift. The kingdom of God 
does not beckon to natural ability, but to 
spiritual poverty which becomes an empty 
vessel over against the riches of God. 

This is just the meaning of regeneration ; 
that man sees only death as the result of all 
natural life-development, and therefore ap- 
propriates to- himself eternal life from God 
in him who is the bearer of divine life, the 
Son of God. The statement of Paul : "The 
wages of sin is death ; but the gift of God is 
eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord" 
keenly defines the essence of Christianity in 
this way, that it mediates to its members a 
divine life from above. Regeneration as 
such, surpasses the thoughts of man. Such 
things cannot be invented. They cannot be 
searched out. They cannot be concocted. 
The idea of regeneration is intelligible only 
as it is an expression of real life — such life as 
only he could find, who himself brought eter- 
nal life. As the Bringer of this supernatural 
gift of eternal life, Jesus proclaimed to hu- 
manity the glad tidings of the highest good, 
which stretches beyond the temporal, bridges 
the gulf between time and eternity, and thus 



58 Do We Need Christ 

made possible the attainment of the eternal 
goal. 

Ritschl, giving a new interpretation to 
Christianity in the sense of naturalistic 
moralism, adopted the terms "supernatural 
and supermundane/ ' in the sense that the 
moral, mental life rises above nature so far 
as it indicates the material connection of 
physical causes and effects, and rises above 
the bustle of the world, so far as it signifies 
the connection of the actually conditioned 
and divided existence. But the eminence of 
the Christian doctrinal view consists just in 
this, that the highest morality which grows 
out of the natural condition of our inborn hu- 
man nature belongs also in the Christian 
view to the realm of naturalness and the 
world which remains included in the spheres 
of mere finite value. By this, Christianity 
proves its origin (in the sense of real tran- 
scendency) from supernatural and supermun- 
dane revelation, viewed even as the dogmat- 
ical preaching of a rational system, of an 
objective doctrine, or even of prophetical in- 
struction. It will not set the will in motion, 
by means of a theory, as is the case with 
Buddha, but by the announcement of the fact 



For Communion With God? 59 

of the love of God which really comes down 
upon earth in the only begotten Son. In this 
it offers truth, peace, and blessedness to the 
humble receiver of the divine gift which 
comes from above. In this way the fulfill- 
ment of that, which is put into human nature, 
like the satisfaction of the deepest needs in- 
herent in it, is accomplished by real divine 
self-manifestation and self-communication. 
In a supernatural gift of salvation, which 
lifts human nature above itself and thereby 
leads it to the goal appointed for it, there 
lies the judgment of the gospel on every 
human being that rejects it. This nega- 
tive judgment, however, is only the reverse 
of the positive renewing-power, which trans- 
forms natural men into eternity-men, and 
thus gives them a real communion with 
God. 

The foundation of the religion of Zara- 
thustra, except a few after-efforts, has been 
blown away; that of Mani is destroyed; 
that of Buddha has gained over a large por- 
tion of the Asiatic race; but in spite of all 
efforts of self-assertion, and in spite of some 
efforts of self-renewing, as a spiritual power 
it is slowly decaying. Islam is still in the 



60 Do We Need Christ 

ascendency in Asia and Africa ; it even does 
considerable missionary work, whose power 
of attraction rests on the pride and common 
feeling of the Moslems, on the easy propa- 
gation of ceremonial forms and on conces- 
sions to sensual temperament, but its results 
are and have been mostly achieved by fa- 
natical application of force. Politically its 
power is broken. 

Christ, however, with full clearness of 
mind, refused every application of outward 
force. Coercion, wherever it is used in the 
Church, is against the spirit of the gospel. 
Modern liberty of conscience and religious 
freedom, is the expression and product of 
Christian principle. Jesus Christ is King in 
the kingdom of the Spirit, without exercis- 
ing at his command outward means of 
power. And yet he advances from victory 
to victory. No less a person than Napoleon 
made the remarkable statement that all the 
kingdoms of the victorious conquerors — of 
an Alexander, a Caesar, a Charlemagne — 
have crumbled, just as his own life-work 
had been dashed to pieces, but the kingdom of 
the Prince of Peace, who refused arms and 
would not gather an army around him, who 



For Communion With God? 6i 

refused the power of the world and all its 
glories, exists in indestructible power, and 
not only exists but in progressive conquest 
of the world, achieves ever new victories. 
May one not also see in the judgment of the 
wrecked conqueror of the world, on "the 
divinity of Jesus Christ/' founded on the 
ever new attractive and transforming power 
of the conqueror of the heart, a reflection of 
personal resignation? In the main he per- 
tinently expressed the inevitable impression 
that the energy of the efforts of Jesus 
Christ, defying the change of times, "ex- 
ceeds the range of the creative power of 
man." 

Jesus may ever be crucified anew; the 
Prince of Life cannot be killed. Crucifixion 
promises for him only resurrection. Here 
and there one may take offense at him; 
whole sections may apostatize from him — 
but progress still remains, an ever continual, 
unchecked winning of humanity. Jesus may 
be pronounced dead; Christianity may be 
declared overcome, or done away with ; but 
it rises with ever new victorious power ; con- 
founds the prophecies of its death through 
self-renovation and in resurrection-glory 



62 Do We Need Christ 

laughs at the proclamations of its destruc- 
tion. 

The contrast between the kingdom of God 
and the world is continual and cannot be 
bridged over. Occasionally all forces of the 
world seem to be unfettered for the struggle 
against Christ. As, by his crucifixion Jesus 
was destroyed according to human judg- 
ment, thus Christianity seems also at times 
to be doomed to destruction ; but all at once 
it is here again, not only in old power, but in 
rejuvenated power. Whence these powers 
of strength? They rise from the hidden 
deeps of eternity — in some way inconceiv- 
able, incomprehensible, immeasurable, but 
nevertheless effective, yea, irresistible. Thus 
the work of Jesus is like the divine govern- 
ment of the world. The world sees in the 
world only finite causes and effects ; and yet, 
in a slow but continually ascending historical 
progress, God leads the development of hu- 
manity to its final goal. The look bound to 
the senses, sees nothing but the factors of the 
visible world; and yet, mental factors are 
working in it which are not absorbed by it, 
but go beyond it ; and these prove the domi- 
nating factors. Divine omnipotence, hidden 



For Communion With God? 63 

to the natural eye, a nothing for unbelief, 
is more effective with its surpassing power 
than the great powers observed by human 
wisdom. A proof of the divinity of Chris- 
tianity is the similar supernatural and super- 
mundane activity of the exalted Christ. In 
the midst of the abominations of the Roman 
persecution of the Christians, John saw, with 
an unshaken belief, the triumph of his Risen 
Lord sitting at the right hand of the Father, 
over the heathen empire of Rome. Over 
against every attack of naturalism on the 
sanctuaries of the Christian Church, the 
Christian faith which professes Christ re- 
tains, not merely in the form of didactic tra- 
dition, not merely in dependence on ecclesi- 
astical injunction, not merely in connection 
with family-habit or out of respect for the 
stability of the state, but in personal devo- 
tion of individual life-communion with 
Christ as redeemer, the same bold, conquer- 
ing wisdom, which the Apocalyptic seer once 
expressed in the confession to Jesus : "King 
of kings and Lord of lords." 



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